I am currently working on new design for my site using HTML5, CSS and a sprinkling of JavaScript. Once I started building my basic design I was re-acquainted with a process that really, really annoys me; the constant tweak refresh loop associated with developing a new site layout. So in true yak shaving sysadmin fashion I got side tracked looking for a solution to this problem. After considering the issue for a bit it dawned on me that this may be a good excuse to try out LessCSS JavaScript library....

Having recently developed a plugin (Ruby Rake Plugin) for Atlassian’s Bamboo continuous integration (CI) server I thought I would put together a list of tips for those looking to do the same. As there are some great documents provided by Atlassian on how to get started with plugin development I am not going to go into a lot of detail in this area, it is assumed you already messed around a bit with the Plugin SDK....

Currently I do quite a bit of work in and around the Java virtual machine (JVM), most of the time on Linux. When things go awry and I am trying to establish why, I reach for the Java performance analysis tools. These tools come in two forms, the wonderful GUI known as visualvm, which I use when I am working on my local machine, and the cli tools packaged with the Java Development Kit (JDK), which I use when working remotely....

Having recently started working with chef I have come up with a simple method of kickstarting use of it in the small end of town. This really is designed for those of use managing a large number of very similar servers, or a small number of simple servers. After watching this great presentation on chef by @benr from joyent, I decided it was time to roll up my sleeves and get started with chef....

The following post is a review of the new installer added in 4.4 of Atlassian JIRA. It details my experience with this installer and provides some advice on how to improve it. Since it’s recent release I have seen quite a few posts praising the new JIRA installer so I decided to give it a try at work. First thing that struck me when I went to download it was the linux version was a single file, no deb or RPM(s)....

For a while I have been tempted to stray from the relative safety of Maven and Ant. Every time I fight with these tools, or in the case of maven am stunned and amazed out how simple things can require so much xml, I look over the alternatives wondering if it could be easier. After quite a bitter fight with ant at work I decided it was time to give one of thes new contenders a try....

Over the last few days I have been familiarising myself with some of the rails source code and surveying it for use in my own projects. In doing so I noticed there were quite a few gotchas getting Ubuntu and ruby set up RVM to successfully run the tests suites in rails. This post aims to provide a step by step guide to getting a clean ubuntu installation ready to test and hack on rails, note I am using Ubuntu 11....

Recently I have caught the OS X software development bug and started hacking on a small project in this environment. As I am normally pretty keen to try out new APIs and indeed a whole new language, I was keen to get some unit testing going as early as possible. After a bit of research i discovered the preferred testing solution for this environment was GHUnit, so I downloaded this “framework” and installed it....

Last weekend I was fortunate to have participated in first ever random hacks of kindness event. This was quite an amazing experience and one I really enjoyed, however going into this event I had no idea what to expect, and no real insight into what to bring. So for the benefit of those looking to attend these awesome events in the future, firstly read About RHOK, secondly I compiled a list of my observations and tips....

Recently I started work on a new site which I plan to use underscore.js and backbone.js. Starting a site from scratch can be quite a chore, as well as time consuming. To remedy this I decided to take the plunge and give the html5boilerplate project a try, this project is designed to kickstart your html5 site development with a shell containing all of the stuff that you need to begin with....